The next phase of growth is coming from a connected world and that is where the industry is heading today. Keeping that in Mind India’s largest telco Bharti Airtel today signed a deal with Nokia to create a strategic roadmap for network evolution to the new technology standard and management of connected devices.

Under a new agreement, Nokia and Airtel will collaborate to drive the definition and development of these new services with a focus on taking the path to 5G network connectivity. This effort will build on 4G in the most efficient way in terms of power, operations, and cost effectiveness, and with the highest level of quality and reliability.

“Airtel has always been a pioneer in rolling out the latest technologies to deliver a superior experience to its customers. 5G and IoT applications have tremendous potential to transform lives and we are pleased to partner with Nokia to enable these future technologies for our customers,” said Abhay Savargaonkar, Director – Network Services (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel.

Nokia and Airtel will leverage Nokia’s 5G FIRST end-to-end 5G solution including AirScale radio access portfolio and AirFrame data center platform to demonstrate 5G capabilities and simulate use cases of 5G extreme broadband and ultra-reliability and low latency communication.

“After our successful association with Bharti Airtel for 2G, 3G and 4G technologies, we are proud to partner to prepare for the future of mobile networks. We will leverage our global experience in 5G-related industry projects and collaborations to enable Bharti Airtel to prepare their networks for greater capacity, coverage and speed,” said Sanjay Malik, head of India Market, Nokia.

Jointly both the companies would conduct workshops to devise a strategy for transition towards 5G and how that can be leveraged for enterprises and other services. They will also optimize spectrum by proper assessment of the relevant spectrum.

5G promises to enable dramatic improvements in peak data speeds, network latency and agility, as well as the ability to enable new capabilities such as network slicing. This will allow operators to support a growing number of customers and potentially billions of connected IoT devices with consistent quality of service, laying the foundation for smarter cities and rural communities, connected vehicles, industrial automation, remote healthcare and a myriad of business possibilities.